


Comfort's In Heaven

by angevin2



Category: Richard II - Shakespeare
Genre: Always Use Lube, Angst and Porn, General Overarching Grimness, M/M, Missing Scene, RSC compliant, Rough Sex, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-26
Updated: 2014-08-26
Packaged: 2018-02-14 20:40:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2202339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angevin2/pseuds/angevin2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Richard seeks Aumerle's comfort while holed up at Flint Castle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Comfort's In Heaven

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fiftysevenacademics (rapiddescent)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rapiddescent/gifts).



> Based on the 2013 Royal Shakespeare Company production with David Tennant as Richard and Oliver Rix as Aumerle. It takes place between Act III scene ii and Act III scene iii. The descriptions of Flint Castle are as accurate as I could make them, although the conditions Richard and company are subjected to owe a lot to Jean Créton's depiction of conditions at Conwy Castle, which is where they took refuge in real life.
> 
> The prompt I use asked for porn. I hope that really grim porn is appropriate.

Flint Castle is empty when the King of England arrives. 

He comes with a retinue of six, and there are none there to greet him. When they arrive, exhausted after nine grueling days of travel, the halls are dark, unfurnished, and unaired. It feels almost as though the whole world has been stricken by the pestilence. Richard wishes it _would_ be. There's something soothing, almost, about the thought of the world ending. If it were, Richard would know it wasn't _personal._ He wouldn't die knowing that God had abandoned _him_.

It doesn't make it any easier, either, giving up hope. Everything still has to _happen_.

They dine -- if one can call it that -- quickly, by torchlight. It's just bread and wine. Carlisle tries to raise their spirits by invoking the Lord's Supper, but nobody is much cheered. Richard forces himself to swallow a few bites, so that the others don't feel too inhibited to eat, but he needn't have bothered. Nobody else has much appetite either. Aumerle watches him with baleful eyes, and Richard suspects he's willing him to eat something. He hasn't left Richard's side since they sailed from Ireland. Richard had tried, at first, to push him away, but on the first night after embarking for Flint, he had crawled into his cousin's bed after hours of lying awake, empty and exhausted, and when Aumerle had awakened to find Richard's arm around his waist, he'd simply turned in his arms and rubbed his back gently until he fell asleep.

At Flint, Richard doesn't sleep at all. The six of them have all slept on piles of straw in the great round keep; there's nothing else to sleep on and none of them have found solitude a desirable condition -- except for Richard, and then it's not that he _wants_ to be alone, it's just slightly more bearable than his friends' efforts to keep his hopes up. There's no point to any of it. At night he lies awake, pressed to Aumerle's back, until he's certain everyone else is asleep, and then paces about the room, or climbs up to the top of the tower and stares into the blackness. He wonders if he would die when he hit the ground, if he were to throw himself from the parapet. He clutches his long grey robe about himself and shudders. Men sometimes survive great falls, after all, if not for too long. The thought makes his gorge rise.

Richard had made his will before he left for Ireland. He had specified that, were he to die at sea, his funeral should proceed as planned, even if his body were lost. It had made his flesh crawl, contemplating a cold death at sea, but now he knows himself a fool, for why would it be worse to be a prey for fish than for worms? If the Lord sees fit to strike him down, why not do so at once -- why must he make his own anointed outlive his glory? _I have always tried to do your will,_ Richard thinks, _and now you withhold even death from me._

He wonders what, when the time comes, Henry will do with his body.

When he hears footsteps on the stairs behind him, he gives a start, and then for a moment he can almost laugh at himself: he pretends not to care whether he lives or dies, yet he can be startled when someone comes up behind him unannounced. It isn't likely that Henry Bolingbroke, even after sweeping through England and meeting no resistance, could seize an entire castle in the dead of night without making a sound or being visible from the battlements, and as it happens it's only Aumerle anyway, and his worried face is pale in the torchlight.

"My lord," he says, making a nervous half-obeisance. "I didn't mean to frighten you -- I woke up and you weren't there, and I thought -- "

"Don't worry, cousin," Richard says. "I'm not going to jump off the walls."

"No, of course not," Aumerle says, in a way that suggests that it's exactly what he was afraid of. When Richard beckons him over, he mounts his torch on the wall and then hovers at Richard's elbow as though he might need to stop him should he change his mind. 

Richard drapes an arm around his shoulders, staring out into the night. Before Aumerle arrived with the torch his eyes had adjusted enough to the darkness that he'd been able to make out the faint outlines of the landscape. Now everything beyond the tower is black and impenetrable.

"Do you suppose we could escape, if we fled this castle right now?" Richard asks. 

Aumerle looks up at him, his grey eyes wide, caught somewhere between hope and disbelief. "Where would we go, my lord?"

"We might disappear into the wilds of Wales," Richard says, "and never be heard from again. We could -- " He blinks, confused, having found his efforts to escape into fantasy thwarted by his ignorance of what common people actually do with their time. "I don't know, what do you think people do in the wilds of Wales?"

"Keep sheep, probably," Aumerle says, a smile tugging at the edges of his mouth. "Do you know anything about keeping sheep?"

"Do you?" Richard says, raising an eyebrow. "I don't suppose they're _that_ different from deer. Maybe you could do the actual shepherding." He smiles, just a little, and reaches up to stroke his cousin's cheek. "I'll sit on a hill and play a pipe." He wiggles his fingers in the air as though he were playing a tabor, and Aumerle smiles for real. He has a beautiful smile, even though he's always so serious. 

"I think you'd scare the sheep," he says. 

A frail wisp of laughter escapes Richard's throat. It's a strange feeling, one that Richard hasn't thought he'll ever feel again, and its passing leaves him weary and melancholy. He sighs, rubbing absently at his face. 

"You need to sleep, my lord," Aumerle says, taking his arm. "You're exhausted."

"Don't tell me what I need," Richard snaps. Aumerle's eyes widen again, and he draws back, stung. Richard watches him for a moment. It's a warm night and he's dressed in only his shirt and hose; his skin seems to glow in the torchlight, even when he's pale with worry and fatigue. Without his robe it's clearer that he's remarkably trim and muscular for someone of his stature. Something inside Richard softens, and he reaches out to touch Aumerle's face again. Aumerle leans into Richard's touch, his eyes drifting shut for the briefest of instants as Richard strokes a thumb over his cheekbone. 

"I -- meant no offense, my lord," Aumerle says. 

Richard smiles down at him. "Come downstairs," he says. 

Aumerle straightens up and stifles a gasp, making it clear that he knows exactly what Richard is asking. His face lights up, desire at odds with concern: the nice thing about Aumerle is that you always know exactly what he's thinking. Finally he tilts his chin upward and gives Richard a firm nod. "All right," he says. 

Richard leans in for a moment, as if for a kiss, but he draws back and takes Aumerle's arm instead to lead him down the stairs and into the upper gallery. They've forgotten to bring the torch, so that the open center of the keep appears a bottomless black pit not touched by the slivers of moonlight that trickle in from the arrowslits to illuminate the gallery. When Edward the first had built this castle a century ago, the great tower had been designed to draw any invaders down into the basement, so that the castle's defenders could converge on them from above. A perfectly valid strategy, if you had more than six people.

He draws Aumerle into a small chamber; in an instant he's got him pressed against the door, kissing him fiercely. Aumerle's fingers clench on his back, and when Richard pulls his mouth away for a breath a small moan escapes his throat. 

"My lord -- " he breathes, and Richard leans in again to smother Aumerle's words with his lips. 

"Don't," Richard whispers against his mouth, slipping his hand between Aumerle's legs. 

"Richard," Aumerle moans, tilting his head back as Richard strokes his cock until it's hard. He drapes his arms around Richard's neck, trying to draw him down for another kiss, but Richard draws back to examine his cousin's face. In the dark room, lit only by moonlight, Aumerle's deep-set eyes are hidden in shadow, making his expression, usually so transparent, difficult to read. He sinks to his knees, pushing Richard's shirt aside and beginning to unlace his hose. 

"No," Richard says, seizing Aumerle's wrist. Aumerle turns his face upward, looking wounded, and Richard releases his wrist and joins his cousin on his knees. He cups Aumerle's face in both hands for a moment before bending in to kiss his neck, just under his ear. "I want you to fuck me," he whispers.

Aumerle's mouth drops open, and Richard is tempted to slip his tongue into it again, but before he can do so, Aumerle stammers, "You -- you do?" He swallows hard, shaking his head. "But we haven't got anything to -- and besides, you're -- it wouldn't be proper -- "

Richard presses his fingers to his cousin's lips. "I don't care," Richard says. "About any of that." He trails a finger along Aumerle's strong jawline. "I know you want me." 

Aumerle nods, breathing hard, and leans in, pressing his forehead to Richard's. "I just don't want to hurt you," he says. 

Richard smooths a hand through his hair. "You won't," he whispers. "Not in any way that matters." 

Aumerle reaches up to brush a strand of Richard's hair off of his forehead before kissing him gently, easing his robe from his shoulders and unlacing his hose to roll them down his hips. Richard unlaces Aumerle's hose as well, wrapping his fingers around his cock for a moment before turning so that his back is to Aumerle and then lying prostrate on the cool stone floor. He can feel Aumerle's hands on his hips, raising them off the floor, and hear him spit into his hand, and then Aumerle is pushing slowly, agonizingly into him. It's a laborious process, with no oil at hand, and all Richard can do is grit his teeth and hold his breath as his fingers scrabble against the stones. He turns his head to one side, feeling his hair sticking to his cheek and falling across his face, and he must have cried out because Aumerle is stroking his hair and asking him if he wants him to stop and he just moans "No," and then, "no, don't stop."

It lasts an age, or perhaps only a few minutes. Aumerle's hands clench on Richard's hips as he thrusts as quickly as he can, and Richard groans, one hand still clutching at the floor and the other wrapped around his own cock, stroking himself furiously. He feels stretched open, naked and vulnerable -- he cannot remember the last time he allowed anyone to use him this way. It's never hurt like this before. Behind him, Aumerle's panting Richard's name sometimes, and sometimes God's; when he reaches out to take hold of Richard's cock, Richard unclenches his own hand and inhales sharply through gritted teeth. It's only a few strokes before he's crying out and coming all over Aumerle's hand and then his shuddering and clenching sets Aumerle off as well. His body goes rigid for a moment and then he collapses, sighing Richard's name into his ear. They lie still for a long moment before Aumerle withdraws and Richard rolls onto his side, curling up around himself. 

"Richard -- " Aumerle says, his voice quivering. He lays a hand on Richard's back for a moment, then removes it. "You're bleeding."

Richard stares ahead as though he could see through the rough stone wall to the ditch and the hills and the river beyond. He doesn't move, not even to brush his hair out of his eyes, so that everything before him appears through an auburn blur. He tries to concentrate on the pain in his arse and ignore the dull ache settling into his mind, but whatever he had been looking for, he hasn't found it. He is spent and limp and still unfulfilled.

"It doesn't matter," he says, finally. "You won't be the last person to spill my royal blood."

There's a long silence, and then Aumerle is kneeling down in front of him. Even in the dim light he looks lost. 

"Richard -- " he says, and when Richard extends a hand, Aumerle takes it in both of his.

"I told you," Richard says. "It's all right." He gives his cousin a thin smile. It's not Aumerle's fault, after all. "So -- was it good for you?"

Aumerle's face crumples, and he withdraws his hand. "It was -- " He shakes his head. "Richard, I -- I didn't want it to be like this."

Richard looks up at him. He thinks _I should have taken you to bed much, much sooner._ He thinks _It should have happened on fine linen sheets with warm oils and spiced wine._ He thinks _I knew it was our last chance._

He says, instead, "I know."

Aumerle stretches out beside him and reaches out to touch his face, leaning in for a kiss. He isn't even angry at Richard. Richard panics: what has he done to deserve this? He touches Aumerle's cheek in turn and gently turns his face to the side. 

"Go to bed, Edward," he says.

Aumerle wrenches his eyes shut for a moment, and then struggles to his feet. "Of course, my lord," he says. 

***

There are only minutes left before Northumberland returns, and Edward has nevertheless managed to lose all of his composure and crumple into a sobbing heap right there on the battlements. Richard, who has somehow forgiven him everything he's done wrong since they arrived at Flint, clings to his shoulders, stroking his hair and then his back and spinning out a fantasy of digging their own graves with tears. Edward shudders under his caresses, and Richard, his voice airy, says, "I talk but idly, and you mock at me." 

It is too much, to have Richard this close to him, only to mock him in the midst of an intimate moment, and Edward pulls away, struggling to collect himself before he turns to face Richard. He wants to accuse him, to ask _how could you even think that,_ but the words won't leave his throat. All he can do is stare.

Richard's own expression softens, and before Edward has wrapped his brain around what's happening Richard reaches out to cup his face and kisses him. Edward freezes for just a moment, but Richard's kiss nearly melts him: it's soft and gentle and almost entirely unlike the desperate clinch from the other night.

It's almost like Richard is trying to acknowledge his love. 

He takes hold of Richard's wrists, and clings to him.


End file.
